The National Gallery in Prague, in cooperation with the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany and Goethe-Institut in Prague, presents a retrospective of German artist Gerhard Richter, his first in Central and Eastern Europe. It presents selected works done by the artist in the last sixty years bringing together more than seventy of them. 

The National Gallery in Prague, in cooperation with the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany and Goethe-Institut in Prague, presents a retrospective of German artist Gerhard Richter, his first in Central and Eastern Europe. It presents selected works done by the artist in the last sixty years bringing together more than seventy of them. 

The exhibition presents all facets of Richter’s oeuvre: the iconic portraits of his daughters Betty and Ella painted from photographs, paintings that reflect everyday life as well as historical and topical social issues, mountain- and seascapes, monochrome grey paintings, expressive abstract compositions, a series of computer-processed geometric Strips, and his famous Colour Charts that inspired the assignment of the monumental stained-glass windows for the Gothic Cathedral in Cologne. The Uncle Rudi painting, portraying Richter’s uncle as a Nazi soldier, which the artist donated to Lidice half a century ago, is loaned to the exhibition from the Lidice Collection of Fine Arts. Also on view are sheets from his legendary Atlas – a collection of photographs he made, newspaper clippings and drawings that Richter systematically collected as preparatory material from the 1960s. The exhibition highlights Richter’s painting styles centred around the theme of “history” – not only the history ofGermany, but also of the artist’s family and art itself. The theme of history links his well-known, often personal photo-realistic works with those focused on the history of art, seeking to express something that lay beyond the capacity of words.

The exhibition is chronological, emphasizing the “new” theme on which the artist embarked in each section. Richter absorbs many trends, ideas and contemporary events, always showing a desire to move art, and its capacity to move us, forward. Richter always experiments and seeks out a new vocabulary of stylistic expression.

The exhibition is organized as part of the Czech-German Spring of Culture 2017 on the occasion of the 20^th anniversary of the signing of the Czech-German Declaration.   

Curators: Jiří Fajt and Milena Kalinovská in cooperation with Gerhard Richter and his studio

National Gallery Prague - Kinsky Palace